William R Bertelsen Pioneer-InventorDoc

Below you find videos about early and modern inventions of Dr. Bertelsen!

Dr. William R. Bertelsen is a great transportation inventor and visionary. He pioneered the creation of hovercraft (air cushion vehicles) in the 1950s, continued working in the decades since to perfect them with his Gimbal Fan, and recently laid the ground for a wonderful future of transportation with his Aeromobile-Aeroduct System.

Here is Dr. Bertelsen in the mid 1950s ,
with his VTOL model which introduced him to the
world of the "ground effect", the basis of air cushion technology.

Dr. Bertelsen in recent years, after many achievements in the field of transportation

Watch Video 2: The A-2000 traversing airport runways This video shows the craft doing maneuvers on land at an airport in Illionois. This shows the controllability of our vehicles, most unusual for a hovercraft
Note you can try a video requiring a faster Internet connection than you have. It will probably play, but Real Player will pause the video transmission periodically to "buffer" the video, and then continue.

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In fact Dr. Bertelsen has been the first person flying air cushion vehicles as a person over ground and over water even before the british
colleagues did so. See Videos in WindowsMediaFile formate (WMF) and RealMediaFile formate (rm):

It was a great pleasure for me to have a telephone call to this extraordinary and humble man. With his 86 years his voice and his ideas sound a lot younger than you ever would expect! And it started from his motive to be able to reach his patients in the countryside faster under any difficult conditions of weather and over different grounds........ He is STILL working as a medical doctor in the Trinity hospital at his town!

I definitely recommend you to spend some time on his web www.AeroMobile.com and watch many videos, documents and pdf-files.

Wolfgang Ellenberger, president of DoctorsHobbies.com association

Special Presentations

Audio:

Interview with Dr. Bertelsen - streaming audio of Dr. Bertelsen relating his early years of pioneering research.

Document:

Overview of 40 Years of Research - A thirty page paper presenting the many accomplishments Dr. Bertelsen has achieved during his forty years plus in the air cushion technology field.

What has Dr. Bertelsen Done for Transportation?

Dr. William Bertelsen is a medical doctor who also has an engineering background. Starting in the mid 1950s, Dr. Bertelsen was inspired by the experimental research done on vertical take-off aircraft to come up with the concept of an air cushion vehicle (a term he prefers, although the more common term is hovercraft). This is a vehicle that rides over any surface by creating a cushion of air. This air cushion enables the craft to hover above the ground and move in any desired direction. It has many advantages over wheeled vehicles, including being amphibious, not dependent on road surfaces and useable in many different terrain and weather conditions. Since his medical practice at the time was rural, he wanted to use such a machine to travel to his remote rural patients regardless of the weather.

Dr. Bertelsen built an early prototype of a hovercraft vehicle in 1959 (called Aeromobile 35-B), and was photographed by a photographer from Popular Science magazine riding the vehicle over land and water in April on 1959. The article on his invention was the front page story for the July, 1959 edition of Popular Science.

From that beginning, Dr. Bertelsen continued to innovate and promote air cushion vehicles throughout the years. He developed a number of hovercraft models that improved on earlier ones. In the later 1960s he created the most significant advance for air cushion technology - The Gimbal Fan. This device provides full cushion lift air in both vertical and horizontal directions, giving hovercraft much more stability and controllability. Gimbal Fan hovercraft are the best there is today in air cushion vehicles. Along with his inventions, Dr. Bertelsen founded this company, Aeromobile Inc., to promote hovercraft technology throughout this country and the world.

In the mid 1970s, Dr. Bertelsen took hovercraft technology in an exciting new direction with his idea of the Aeromobile-Aeroduct System .His Gimbal Fan vehicles operate in a cylindrical groove (tube) and can be operated completely by automatic guidance. The result is an environmentally friendly, passenger safe, economically efficient solution to the many problems of ground transportion. The congestion, accidents, pollution and high cost of existing modes of transportation disappear with the implementation of the Aeromobile-Aeroduct System. In 1996, this new mode of transportation and its creator, Dr. Bertelsen, were filmed by the Discovery Channel as part of their show Extreme Machine s, which has been aired a number of times on the Learning Channel. This has helped bring worldwide recognition to this most important advance.

Dr. Bertelsen continues to refine his air cushion vehicle technologies and talk to interested parties all around the world about the potential of hovercraft, especially the automated Aeromobile-Aeroduct System. He is convinced that the dismal picture today of polluted, gridlocked cities where transportation is getting more impossible is not necessary. The technology to alleviate the existing woes of ground transportation and prevent future problems is here right now with his inventions. He hopes he can convince enough others of this very practical vision.

His achievements in the field of air cushion technology earned him title “Father of the Air Cushion Vehicle”, which was awarded to him by the World Hovercraft Federation in September of 2002.

He has also been recently inducted into the Alumni Hall of Fame of his Rock Island, IL High School

A History of Dr. Bertelsen's Hovercraft Achievements

Here are some of the milestones in Dr. Bertelsen's efforts to invent and perfect the air cushion vehicle. In the Aeromobile Photo Gallery are photos of many of the craft he has created over the last 40 years.

Arc Wing Arcopter VTOL	1955 - 1957	Dr. Bertelsen's first interests in air cushion vehicles began with his exposure to the experimentation with vertical take-off aircraft. He made considerable advances of his own and developed model vehicles. This work brought his attention to the idea of a "flying automobile", utilizing his discoveries about "ground effect" and flight. Even though he has suspended for many years his work on the Arcopter vehicle to pursue the "flying automobile" concept, he hopes eventually to return to complete his endeavors on the Arcopter vertical take-off craft.
Aeromobile 35-A	1958	A four foot square craft that was the proof of concept of what Dr. Bertelsen then called a "ground effect machine" (GEM). It flew successfully in the workshop. This was his first "flying automobile". This vehicle, along with several others created by Dr. Bertlesen are in the permanent collection of the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution.
Aeromobile 35-B	1959	A larger, more advanced GEM. Dr. Bertelsen piloted this vehicle over land and over a lake. This pioneering flight was recorded by Popular Science magazine, and became the basis of an article in the July 1959 issue of that magazine.
Aeromobile 200-1	1961	A vehicle with much increased horsepower (200 h.p. engine) that could accommodate four passengers with its seven foot diameter.
Aeromobile 200-2	1962	A version of the 200-1 craft commissioned by the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of International Trade Fairs. It was shown at the Tokyo International Trade Fair of 1962 to then Prince Akahito, and later exhibited at Trade Fairs in New Delhi, Zagreb and Turin
Arcopter GEM-1, GEM-2, GEM-3	1961- 1964	These craft overcame the poor horizontal power and hill climbing features of the 200-1 and 200-2 vehicles with a re-designed propulsion system. The GEM-2 flew over the frozen Mississippi river in 1962.
Aeromobile 10, 11, 12	1964 - 1967	The last of Dr. Bertelsen's craft with rudders. They had more control than any previous vehicles - with integrated lift and thrust. There were still limitations, though, and it became clear that a new approach to air cushion travel was needed.
Aeromobile 13	1968	The first of the Gimbal Fan Aeromobiles. Dr. Bertelsen had realized that the rudder in slipstream approach of all previous vehicles could not work. His solution was the use of ducted fans - The Gimbal Fan. He quickly found that two Gimbal Fans per vehicle - one at the front and one at the rear- yield maximum thrust and controllability. The "Gordian Knot" of air cushion vehicles had been resolved. Dr. Bertelsen considers the Gimbal Fan to be the "optimum prime mover" for ACVs.
Aeromobiles 14 - 16	1970 - 1985	These amphibious craft refined the use of Gimbal Fans to power air cushion vehicles. Each model had increased power and payload capacity, and became larger. At the same time, pilot control increased, so that reverse motion, stopping, and stability in high cross winds were characteristic.
Aeromobile 17 (the Aeromobile-Aeroduct System)	1975 - 1996	Starting over almost decades ago, Dr. Bertlesen embarked on an entirely different course: the development of completely automated transit using his Gimbal Fan Aeromobiles. He realized the many economic, environmental and safety advantages of using tubular rights of way to guide hovercraft in an automated fashion. The Aeromobile 17 vehicle represents the completion of the basic R&D needed to fulfill Dr. Bertelsen's vision of the future of transportation. He considers this to be the crowning achievement of his many years of pioneering work in the field of air cushion vehicles.
Aeromobile 2000	1997 - 1999	This is the ultimate of Dr. Bertelsen's amphibious line of vehicles. All his years of innovation and improvement are the basis of a superb machine. It will be commercially available in the first half of 1999.

Dr. Bertelsen’s Vitae

Education:

Indiana Institute of Technology, Undergraduate Mechanical Engieering 1938 to 1940 University of Illinois, Bachelor of Science 1945

University of Illinois College of Medicine, M.D. Degree 1947
Experience:

Experience:

Project Engineer Experimental Department, Minneapolis-Moline Power Implement Company, Moline, IL 1940 - 1942

U.S. Navy, Chicago, 1944 to 1945, Reserve Lieutenant. J.G. To 1948 General medical practice, Neposet, IL, 1948 to 1963

U.S. Army Chest Medicine, Fitzsimons Army Hospital, Denver, Colorado, 1953 to 1955

General Medical Practice, Rock Island, IL, 1963 to 1969
Emergency Care Physician, May 1973 to May 2001

Founder, Vice President Research and Development, and Chairman of Aeromobile, Inc. 1960 to present

Memberships in Professional Aeronautical Organizations:
Associate Fellow, 35 year member, American Institute ofAeronautics and Astronautics

Fellow, The Brittish Hovercraft Society

Fellow, Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute

Memberships in Other Scientific Organizations:

Sigma Xi Scientific Fraternity, American Medical Association, Experiemental Aircraft Association, National Space Institute, U.S. Hovercraft Society, Sponsor, Smithsonian Institution, Physicians for Social Responsibility.

A List of Publications by Dr. Bertelsen

Over the years, Dr. Bertelsen has authored a number of papers for journals and professional organizations. Here is a list of the most important ones (in chronological order):

1.	"Experience with Several Man-Carrying Ground Effect Machines," first international Symposium on Ground Effect Phenomena, Princeton University, October 21-23, 1959.
2.	"Aeromobile", Winter Meeting, American Society of Agricultural Engineers, December 15-18, 1959. "The Design of Ground Effect Vehicles," Canadian Aeronautical Journal, Vol. 6, June, 1960.
3.	"1,500 M.P.H. Family Cars?", Popular Science Monthly, August, 1961.
4.	"Aeromobile, Arcopter, Aeroplow, Air Track, ad other uses of Ground Effect," Winter Meeting, American Society of Agricultural Engineers, December 13-15, 1961.
5.	"The Ultimate Vehicle," Initial Lecture to the Research Symposium on Air Cushion Craft, Department of Engineering, University College of Swansea, Great Britain, July 21-23, 1964.
6.	"Aeromobile", National Safety Congress, Chicago, 1964.
7.	"The Evolution of Integrated Lift, Propulsion, and Control in the Aeromobile Air Cushion Vehicle", Third Symposium on Air Cushion Technology, Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute, Montreal, Canada, 1969.
8.	"The Air Cushion Vehicle in a Mass Transit System," Ninth Symposium on Air Cushion Technology, Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute, October 21, 1975, Ottawa, Canada.
9.	"The Gimbal Fan Air Cushion Vehicle," AIAA/SNAME Advanced Marine Vehicle Conference, San Diego, California, April 17-19, 1978.
10.	"The Arcopter Arc Wing Vertical Take-Off Aircraft," Third Canadian Symposium on Advanced Technology Light Aircraft, Ottawa, Canada, October 23-24, 1979.
11.	"Proposals for Comprehensive Overland Heavy Transportation for Alol-Season, All Climate via Air Cushion Systems," Thirteenth Canadian Symposium on Air Cushion Technology, Monteal, Canada, Septermber 17-19, 1979.
12.	"The Segmented Air Track Amphibious All-Purpose All-Terrain Vehicle," Seventeenth Canadian Symposium on Air Cushion Technology, Canadian Air Cushion Technology Society, October 4-6, 1983.
13.	"Progress Report on the Research and Development of the Air Cushion Crawler All-Terrain Vehicle," Canadian Air Cushion Technology Society, Toronto, Canada, September 16, 1986, published in the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Journal, June 1987, Vol. 33, No. 2.
14.	"Thirty Years of Research and Development on Air Cushion Vehicles", AIAA intersociety Advanced Manne Vehicle Conference, Arlington, VA June 5-7, 1989.
15.	"The Air Cushion vehicle in an Automated Transportation System: An Update" Canadian Air Cushion Technology Society 1994 Conference on Air Cushion Technology, Montreal, Queec, Septermber 21, 1994.

Last update: July 20, 2003